Many modern applications use speech use to detect or identify an individual. For example, security applications may capture speech samples from a plurality of individuals. In order to determine if any of those individuals is a person of interest, a set of features is extracted from each of the speech samples and is analyzed for a match. Conventional speaker identification systems optimize performance for a set of speakers, focusing on the same features and parameters for all speakers. That is, regardless of the identity of the person of interest, the same features are extracted from the speech samples for analysis, and the same system is used to score the speech samples.